888Poker Exits Poland

888Poker has left the Poland gambling market. The country continues to tighten its gambling laws, prompting casino operators such as 888 to join the exodus of online casinos that don’t hold a local gaming license.

Last year in December, the Gambling Act in Poland was explicitly amended to ban online casinos that did not hold a local license. The Finance Ministry has already given the local internet service providers up to the 1st of July to block every online casino domains that seemed to be floating the new law.

888Poker – Reason for their Exit

Polish poker players have already started reporting that 888Poker is informing its players that their ability to play on their site will be ending on the 5th of June 2017. The online Poker site, which has already blocked new poker players from signing up at their site, said that the exit was as a result of ‘business reevaluation’.

The Ministry has a list of blacklisted domains, and the list keeps growing. Currently, there are 235 domains on that list. More so, the social media giant, Facebook, might sooner or later find its self on that same list according to Wieslaw Janczyk, the deputy finance minister.

Earlier this month, Wieslaw Janczyk announced to the Polish parliament that NTA (National Tax Authority) has been keeping an eye on the social media websites to identify cases where online gambling games are planned in violation of the Gambling Act of 2016.

The Ministry made a statement last week so as to clarify what constitutes the nature of gambling with regards to slot machines. Their statement referenced social games by stating that some slot (Pokies) games, both in land-based casinos and online, are created in a manner that contradicts the gambling law.

The Polish Ministry seems to suggest that any game qualifies as gambling if it contains any element of randomness to determine the outcome. For instance the slots, they work with the RNG (Random Number Generator).

The final verdict on the matter was that the Ministry of Finance and Development are the only ones that are to determine whether a device or a machine qualifies as an illegal gambling activity.

After all has been said, we at Kiwi Casinos want New Zealanders to gamble responsibly and never to be found on the wrong side of the law whatsoever. We will do all we can to keep Kiwis in the loop with regards to the change in the online gambling industry.